Dear Friends at Midwifery Today,

I am writing to publicly express my deepest gratitude towards Linda Arnold and the staff at Casa de Nacimiento in El Paso, Texas. I recently had the great fortune of interning at their birth center and attended almost 100 births in 7 weeks. After many years of being a homebirth apprentice, I realized that the variety of birth scenarios I had been privileged to were limited at that I need much more experience to feel competent and ready for the full responsibility and role of a midwife. My homebirth Senior Midwives gave me all they could, and I am thankful for their support, time and energy, but the reality is that women having homebirths often don’t want to be checked by an apprentice, and should have whatever they want. What I learned in El Paso was priceless. I was given the opportunity to gain a magnitude of really valuable, basic skills, to encounter the variety of women and their unique needs, and to be privileged to the sheer quantity and quality of very diverse births. Not to mention the extraordinary cultural experience which was incredibly enriching and eye opening. It was a remarkable, life changing, empowering, profoundly educational experience and I will always be so grateful to Casa and their midwives. Thank you, Linda, for your ongoing work serving the Mexican community at Casa de Nacimiento, and keeping it open and available for student interns. Thank you from my heart.